𝐈𝐥𝐥-𝐅𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 ✔️

37

I knew she was going to be upset with me. That's why I hesitated to go into the cave. But I still force myself to.

"Hello," I say casually as I reach the bottom. She's silent. She doesn't respond. 

"I'm going to do it, I am," I tell her, knowing her silence meant anger. "I just...I just had such a good day."

I smiled as I thought about it.

"Smiling over a man who has tried to kill you twice and will gladly do it again, how romantic," she says bitterly. "Your love is one-sided, Luella. That's why you're dead."

I wasn't completely dead. I still breathed and could touch things. I could still touch him. I questioned while playing with a strand of my hair, "What would happen if I told him the truth?"

I expected it to be so easy to kill him after sitting in anger for 200 years. But the second I saw his face again, what was supposed to be so easy felt so difficult. 

"The truth?" she asks.

"Yea," I say. I pause. "What if I gave him his memories back of us?"

I had thought about it several times. But she begins laughing at me. While laughing, she asks, "Are you serious, Luella? The second you give him his memories back he will not hesitate to kill you all over again. I mean, seriously, Luella. I'm trying to help you." 

I blink harshly and let out a sigh. I stutter, "I-I know. I just...he makes it so difficult. Killing your soulmate isn't easy."

"He found it easy," she reminds me. "Not once. But twice."

I nodded as I came back to reality and stopped living in a fantasy where I gave him his memories back and he wanted to marry me all over again. 

"There you go, coming to your senses," she says happily as she reads my mind. "Now, go back there, and send him to The Underworld to kill them all."

I nodded. I was so envious of regular love, human love, I wish I had been born into a regular life. But I wasn't. I was born into a world where I was shunned by my people and betrayed by my husband. I needed to stop letting my old feelings for him get in the way of what I am obligated to do now.

I return back home. I'm careful to be quiet since I don't want to wake him. I thought I had a better chance of getting there undetected at night than during the day. 

"I thought you left," Adonis says behind me. I jump before turning around, my back pressed against the wooden door.

"I just went down to the beach," I tell him. He is without a shirt and the state of his dark curls tells me he had never even fallen asleep. 

He steps toward me. My back is against the door, I have nowhere to go. He stands so close to me as his dark eyes glance between my eyes and lips. He places his hands against the door I'm leaning on and becomes closer to my height.

"Are we gonna stay here forever, Valeria?" he asks me. "Because if that's what you want, I'll do it. I'll leave my people to burn down there for eternity and stay here with you."

His eyes move to my lips again. No, I think to myself. I couldn't kiss him, not again, I knew how that ended. Kissing him would be the death of me. 

"I'll throw it all away for you," he whispers, his lips nearly touching mine as they say the confession. My entire body gets goosebumps, a strand of his hair grazes my forehead. "I'd rather have you than an empire."

I want to better the world. Angels and demons are both liars yet both want to lead. I've been trying to become this world's God for centuries to help them and protect them from these two creatures.